A QUESTION OF DIVINE RIGHT

General Sherburne, in an article printed elsewhere in this issue, states a fear that men of certain educational qualifications are likely to believe themselves born with the right to command, regardless of their individual ability as leaders; whereas in reality there are countless men of less fortunate schooling who, on account of personal fitness, are far more suitable for commissions. That he is right in his assertion that "a college man, because he is a college man, is not thereby given a divine right to become an officer," is undeniable. Naturally all men of any certain type of education can not become first class or even second rate officers, any more than all the undergraduates of a university such as this, may be expected to become engineers of high quality.

Throughout all of her varied experiences with military training, both in the Regiment of 1916 fame, and in the later units of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, the University has endeavored to keep this fact in view and to make allowance for it. Periodical shifts among those holding places in the commissioned and non-commissioned grades in the corps tended to divide the leaders from the led. The permanent installation of tested men in the positions of company commander and first sergeant afforded opportunity for each sixty men to be placed under the careful observation of two trained cadets who could discover their individual ability, develop each man to the highest extent of which he was capable, and report to his superiors at stated intervals upon the progress made by each candidate and his fitness for further training at one of the Government O. T. C.'s.

Military Science has become an established course at Harvard, not as an aid to those who, because of their civil schooling were inevitably bound to become officers; but rather as a means of selecting the promising officer material from the unpromising, and of developing in each, regardless of his chances for a commission as many soldierly qualities as possible.